Category: People Helping People

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Business Ethics, Business-general, Consumer Issues, Corporate Social Responsibility, Democracy, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Green Business, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, Green Marketing, Greenwashing, Innovation, localism/locavore, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, People Helping People, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Talking to the Other Side, Technology Tagged with , , , , ,

While searching “electric lawn service near me,” I found this CNN story from 2000 miles away that describes an eco-village sold down the river by the new owner of the land.

It is very unfortunate that the original developer didn’t get any guarantees that a buyer would maintain the fossil-free commitment written into the sale documents. Nonetheless, I think a creative and skilled attorney could make a number of different legal arguments that could force the developer to honor the agreement. Could the Environmental Defense Fund? perhaps take this on? It would be a great precedent to say that a community developed specifically as an eco-community could not then be put at the mercy of eco-hostile development.

As a non-lawyer, all I can do is speculate about the arguments a lawyer might use to block the conversion of the acquired parcels to fossil fuels (I have no idea if any of these would hold up in court and I am not presenting this as legal advice). Arguments could be made about such harms as

  • Introducing new health risks (especially to children)
  • Negative progress on climate that goes against International, US,Colorado, and neighborhood climate goals
  • Adverse possession (a doctrine that gives rights to squatters in certain circumstances)
  • The deliberate destruction of a cohesive intentional community
  • And of course, about consumers’ rights: this could clearly be seen as bait-and-switch: buying into a community with a stated purpose, and having that purpose violated, even shredded.

After all, a group of children have sued for climate justice, and the US Supreme Court recognized that their suit had validity (there have been many conflicting decisions on this case, however).

But the courts aren’t the only recourse. I do know something about organizing movements, and these neighbors should be organizing a movement. To list a few among many possibilities, they could be:

  • Organizing mass protests outside the developer’s office
  • Saturating the local paper with letters to the editor and op-eds
  • Enlisting allies in powerful environmental organizations, of which Colorado has no shortage
  • Protesting at the capital in Denver that their rights are being taken away
  • Contacting the press ahead of and after all of these events
  • Physically but nonviolently blocking attempts to connect the pipelines (note: this is illegal civil disobedience and participants might be subject to arrest)
  • Researching obscure laws that might provide tools that can successfully block the connection
  • Organizing boycotts and other public shamings of the developer

Plus, I really have to wonder what the developer is thinking. Eco-friendly homes are in high demand, can often sell for more than the price of comparable fossil-powered homes, and prove a skill set that many homeowners want. After all, people moved from other states just to participate in this community. And forcing eco-hostile housing development into an eco-friendly community is a recipe for public relations disaster and a bad, bad reputation.

Why not simply stop, think about the benefits of keeping this community identity, and use it as a marketing tool? That would make so much more sense than risking ongoing hostility, a ruined reputation and possibly much worse.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Consumer Issues, Ethics: General, People Helping People, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , ,
I don’t typically get to play detective—but one recent morning, I received a priority morning FedEx delivery containing a check for just under $6K from a company I’d never heard of. No note. No trace of this company or even the dollar amount when I searched my email. Some other red flags, too, like a total mismatch of sender and company (different states), the misspelling of the bank’s name and the absence of any branch address—although it had several security features that seemed to check out.
Having trained as a journalist and been online since 1994 (not counting a brief experiment with Compuserve in 1987), I have pretty decent research skills. So the first thing I did was call the phone number on the check, where I got a recording about the “text subscriber” not being available (not a company phone, in other words). Second, I googled the bank routing number, which came up empty—so I flipped it around, searched for the routing number for this bank’s Pennsylvania branches, and got a match. I was expecting it to be the group of numbers on the left, but it was the middle set, which is why I didn’t find it the first time. Next, I searched for the company name. It’s a real company, it’s in the green energy industry, and it is located where it says on the check. And then I left a voicemail for the accounting department.
The company controller called me back about two minutes later, confirmed that the check was bogus, and was thrilled that I was willing to send pictures of the check and the FedEx envelope. She said it was the second call like this she’d received today. So, hopefully, we’re catching a crook. It was actually kind of fun, and not hugely time-consuming. Plus, since I’m a consultant to green and socially conscious businesses, I mentioned that I’d be happy to send information on how I help companies like hers, if she wanted to pass it on to her marketing people—and in her thank-you note, she mentioned that she’d passed the correspondence to the company president. It would be such sweet irony if this ended up netting me a real client.
And later in the day, I got a note from someone who had been in discussion with me about writing an article—and with whom I was treading cautiously (including requesting payment ahead in full via teller’s check) because there were definitely some yellow flags in his correspondence. It was the scammer! So I wrote back to him, “I only received the check this morning with no note, drawn on the account of a company I’d never heard of, and for an amount almost triple what I had requested. I didn’t even know it was from you until just now (there was a sticker over the return address so I couldn’t see it until I pulled it off). The phone number on the check was bogus, so I called the company, and they said the check was bogus as well. Needless to say, we will not be doing business.” And then I forwarded the entire email correspondence to the company whose check he forged! Now, the company has the phone number the sender gave FedEx, the one on the check, and the crook’s working email address. I’m hanging on to the original check and envelope for now, in case they are needed for a mail fraud case.
This shortcuts the typical interaction, where scammers say they accidentally overpaid, you refund the difference, and then you’re out of luck when the first check bounces :-).
I still believe that most people are basically good—but there are enough bad apples in there that you really do have to be careful. When I punch my security code into an ATM or card terminal, I always shield the keyboard with my other hand. My passwords are not guessable and the cheat sheet I’ve made for them not only uses a non-obvious file name but has nicknames that are only meaningful to me. I will instantly understand what “1stdaupobhse” means, but it would be meaningless to anyone else. And I keep a virus scanner on my computer, as well as file backup to the cloud. And when I get a Facebook friend request from someone who is already my friend, I post publicly on their timeline to warn people, give the URL of the scam profile, and suggest they change their password and report the scammer. In rare instances, it turns out the person found it easier to start a new profile than to get a new password for the existing one (yes, I have some seriously technophobic friends)–but usually, it’s an attempt at identity theft.
In short, we can all take little steps to ensure security and make us all safer, without getting compulsive about it. If you’re still using any passwords that are really easy to guess, change them! And if you’re suspicious, listen to your intuition and take some basic precautions. Don’t send money or give cc information to anyone who contacts you by phone or email with a crazy story (like your grandkid is stranded in a foreign country with no money). If someone claims to be from a government agency (especially a tax department), verify by calling the agency through the number on their official website (NOT a number they give you over the phone or in an email). Don’t panic and do verify. If you get the “grandkid” call, call your grandkid’s cell phone, and if you don’t get an answer, call their parents. And remember: a foreign prince doesn’t need your help to facilitate an illegal money transfer, an award that requires you to pay anything is not an award but a scam, and if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Snopes and Google are your friends. So is AARP’s fraud research, if you’re a member. A little due diligence can save a lot of heartache.
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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Environment, Innovation, People Helping People, Politics, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Joel Makower, Executive Director of GreenBiz.com, posted a thoughtful article about creating systemic change–and actively requested the wisdom of the collective mind. And Gil Friend of Natural Logic devoted an hour and a half to an open discussion of the same topic (It will probably be called “Living Between Worlds #2.5 and it isn’t posted yet as I write this the day the conversation took place).

This is not a coincidence; Gil sent the link to Joel’s article around before the call to everyone who registered for it.

I found the article provocative enough that I posted this comment (and the Living Between Worlds open discussion was so fascinating that I plan to listen again once the video is available):

 

Good piece, Joel. You’ll be glad to know Gil Friend @gfriend kept his promise to discuss this topic in the monthly “Living Between Worlds” brain trust Zoom.

I come at systemic change through a lifetime of weaving together my two “split personalities” as both a marketer specializing in green and social change companies/products/services and as an environmental, social justice, and peace activist whose credits include starting the movement that saved a threatened local mountain.

Through the nonviolent social change lens of people like George Lakey and Erica Chenoweth, I look at institutional structures: how they prop up the system, create major barriers to change, and ultimately fail because they fail to change–and where they are weak and shaky and vulnerable. Sometimes they collapse with surprising speed (think about the Arab Spring a decade ago, or the government of Afghanistan just in the last ten days. Sometimes, it takes decades. The Quakers targeted slavery for about a century before it was illegalized.

But the marketer in me says systemic change is far more likely to succeed if the effort was made to change popular opinion first. The US civil rights movement created the opinion shift that made civil rights legislation not only possible but enforceable. Opposition to the Vietnam war was strong enough that LBJ felt a need to withdraw from his re-election campaign, years before the troops finally came home. And when we did Save the Mountain here in Western Massachusetts 21 years ago, our first task was to change the “this is terrible, but there’s nothing we can do” mentality. Once we shifted that, the victory was very quick.

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By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Copywriting, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Eco-friendly, Environment, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, Innovation, language, localism/locavore, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, People Helping People, Politics, Psychology, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , , , , ,

The owner of the Step Into the Spotlight discussion group, Tsufit, asked what kind of marketing could help Canada go smoke-free by 2035. My answer doesn’t fit into LinkedIn’s comment space, so I’m sharing it here:

 

Ooooh, what a wonderful project! If I might make some cross-border observations that an actual Canadian might find lacking, I would, first of all, identify the key attributes of not just each province but each region of each province and target different themes and different platforms that will work will for each. I’d remember the wild successes on my side of the border of “Don’t Mess With Texas”–which started as an anti-littering campaign and became an unofficial state slogan and a core part of Texans’ identity–and the “I Love New York” campaign that helped the Big Apple find its way from near-depression in the 1970s to, once again, the happening place that “everyone” wants to be part of–and then the state successfully expanded the campaign to talk about all the other parts of New York State.

In libertarian rural Alberta, it might be about the personal freedom to enjoy clean, smoke-free air and the desire to keep out of the clutches of National Health Service doctors by staying healthy. For Quebec City, ads (in French, of course) that might make Anglophone Canadians choke but appeal to the sense of separate identity, e.g., “Oui, we are a beautiful capital city–but we also want to be the capital of good health and clean air.” In a more rural part of Quebec, such as the Gaspésie, they might tout the health benefits of the rural lifestyle, fresh food, and clean lungs.

In the Inuit areas, it might focus on communitarianism, tribal values, etc. For the Metro Toronto and Vancouver markets, perhaps an appeal to cosmopolitan sophistication. “Thinking of smoking as cool is SO 1950s. We’re too smart for that now.”

This national effort of a series of hyperlocal campaigns would need people on the ground in each area to really figure out the touchpoints for each audience slice. And it would be across many media, from traditional TV and print and radio to Instagram, TikTok, etc.

AND it would include a significant curriculum component starting around 3rd grade, to build the defenses of rising generations against tobacco industry hype, to inoculate students with the knowledge of health, economic, and pollution/carbon consequences, and to foster development of healthy lifestyles and a different set of pleasures.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Ethics: General, General Commentary, Gratitude, Innovation, language, People Helping People, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , ,
Here’s a true incident from my teenage college years. I made a mild request to a group of people and one of my dorm-mates lit into me about how I was always so selfish and didn’t care about other people. It hurt like hell to hear this–but I reflected on it and decided that he had a point. So I changed my behavior. Decades later, I saw him at a reunion and thanked him. He had no memory of the incident, but to me it was a key turning point.

Paths of apology and Forgiveness

Criticism usually has a grain of truth (or sometimes a bushel)–so start by expressing thanks, even if it’s delivered nastily. Especially, then, because listening and appreciating is the only way you’re going to get into a positive outcome with someone who’s hostile. Listen, let them get their feelings out, acknowledge their feelings, meaningfully apologize for your action if that’s appropriate. And even if you don’t feel a need to apologize for the behavior or policy, apologize for upsetting them or making them feel unvalued. Don’t try to explain or justify your action yet. Just listen.And whatever you do, don’t say, “I’m sorry, but…”–that’s not an apology. Keep an ear out for the opportunity to take a specific step that will help, and offer, out loud, to take that step. That might just be informing them ahead the next time, or it might be completely undoing an action. You have to decide how much of the criticism is justified and figure out what the real issue is (which may not be the expressed issue).
Once the other person is done venting and you’ve apologized or de-escalated, you might (but might not) want to ask, “would you like to know why I did it that way? Maybe we could think together about how I could do it differently next time so both of our needs get met.” With this, you make them a partner in your growth, and you increase the likelihood of finding a viable solution for both of you, building a relationship of cooperation, not hostility. But you’re really asking. if they decline, drop it. They don’t want to be your partner in potentially changing their behavior, or maybe they are just tired of doing the work of educating others on an issue that is a sore spot for them.
Abundance thinking applies not just to stuff or lifestyle, but to relationships. This is a strategy to create abundance by welcoming even the nay-sayers. Not only do you get to build a relationship, you discover flaws in your thinking, planning, and action that you might not have seen and can now work around. Who knows–maybe your critics will even become your friends or your business partners.
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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Branding, Consumer Issues, Corporate Social Responsibility, Democracy, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, General Commentary, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, Green Marketing, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, People Helping People, Politics, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , ,

A lead story in my local paper covers a proposed ordinance banning plastic in local businesses, with special attention to food businesses, in the small city of Northampton, MA (a big restaurant destination).

The sponsoring City Councilor is someone I know, and I wrote her this note:

Thanks for your good work on the plastics ordinance. As you know, I’ve been a green guy for 50 years, write books and give talks on greening business. One of my talks is called “Making Green Sexy.” Thus, the concerns I have with the plastics bill you’re championing are not about the intent. I would like to see potential problems addressed before it becomes law–so we avoid a debacle like the one we just had over the Main Street improvements (which I loved) and their sad, swift demise).

My big concern is that “recyclable” food containers aren’t recyclable, because paper and cardboard with food waste is not recyclable. We already know we’re not supposed to recycle pizza boxes. Any food waste in paper for recycling could cause the whole batch (potentially thousands of pounds) to be landfilled. It would make more sense to 1) require compostable, and 2) provide city composting stations in several neighborhoods as well as multiple ones downtown. It makes no sense to require compostable and do nothing to encourage composting. Many people will eat their food while still downtown and won’t be bothered to bring their compostable containers to their home compost pile or may not have access to composting at home.

Second, on the straw issue [banning plastic drinking straws]. Why not simply make an exemption for people with motor disabilities in their arms or mouth. For most businesses, a box of 100 plastic straws would probably last months.

Please share this note with your committee at today’s meeting.

We see over and over again that good intentions, not thought through, create more problems than they solve. The Main Street issue involved the city making its extremely wide Main Street much friendlier to bicyclists, pedestrians, and patrons of restaurant outdoor dining areas (which, in the pandemic, have increased in number tremendously)—but failing to get buy-in from (or even consult with) affected business owners, who agitated successfully, and the mayor removed all the improvements. This was sad, as a better situation returned to a worse one, wasting significant money in the process.

In my mind, the lesson was to think things through before acting.

I got this response, which shows that the councilors are indeed thinking about these issues:

Hi Shel- thanks for your support and counsel! Straws for those with disabilities are exempt. We are requiring reusable or compostable and are working on composting services and bulk buying.

Which then says to me that they’ve got a marketing challenge. The general public doesn’t know about this exemption. They also had a marketing challenge with the Main Street improvements. Getting affected parties to participate in decisions that affect them is always a good strategy. Putting in improvements only to discover that vested interests will fight them is not. The trick is to win over those vested interests before they dig in their heels.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, General Commentary, People Helping People, Politics, poverty, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , ,

Wall Street bull statue
Creator: Sam Valadi
Credit: ZUMAPRESS.com/Newscom
Copyright: via ZUMA Wire

A friend–my ex-boss, in fact–sent me this article on how 30 billionaires had vastly increased their wealth during the pandemic.

I wrote back:

While this is a good tool for generating outrage, it’s not where I will put my own energy. First, because I think one of the mistakes the Left makes is to try to divide ourselves to the super-rich and make them targets. Much more productive IMHO to work with them, make them allies, to fund necessary research and actions (as several of these people are cited as doing).

Second, to work for a tax structure that helps redistribute toward those in need. Harness the class anger toward this, rather than generating enmity toward people who we make less likely to do the right thing by shaming them and having demonstrations at their offices. Guilt and shame are lousy motivators. Let’s find ways to honor their virtue rather than shame their success.

On that second point, it would not be hard to find one-percenters who would join and be a public face for that movement. Many multimillionaires and even a few billionaires have come out for income equality, offered to pay higher taxes, donated much of their fortunes, subsidized social change movements. Do the names Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, or George Soros ring any bells?

I have a relatively modest 5-figure income, but I travel in circles where a lot of people have seven- or eight-figure annual incomes. My life is full of abundance and blessings, and I don’t begrudge them their wealth. I do begrudge those who push for corporate welfare policies that penalize the poor while adding unnecessary zeroes at the end of their own already large bank balances–people whose goal in life seems to be transferring as much wealth as possible from the poor to the super-rich. And I don’t believe those few people, powerful though they are, represent the majority of the one percent.

In fact, I believe that smart corporations recognize that labor and consumers are partners in their success who deserve to share in the wealth they help create. They embrace social responsibility, partner actively with neighborhood groups, and grow their businesses by finding ways to serve.

But there’s an element on the left that sees wealth as inherently evil, and the wealthy as always the enemy.

I remember when a philanthropist and peace activist I know lost her house in a fire. Some of the public comments on the news stories were not only not compassionate, they were downright vicious: how dare she accumulate wealth and live in a mansion?

Well, sorry, but making her the enemy is just plain stupid. She’s an activist and philanthropist who chooses to use her money for good. And even if she were totally selfish, she still wouldn’t be the enemy. Rich or poor, we all want dignity and respect. And when we pigeonhole her as an enemy, what we do is alienate not just her but others in her cohort. So non-activist wealthy people who might have funded our causes are instead pushed into the arms of those who proclaim respect for the wealthy. If their politics are not strong, they may even choose to fund causes that actively defend their privilege.

WordPress is not letting me link properly, so here are the sources:

  • Billionaires who got richer during the pandemic: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/12/01/american-billionaires-that-got-richer-during-covid/43205617/
  • Public face: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/31/what-billionaires-said-about-wealth-inequality-and-capitalism-in-2019.html
  • Donated: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/warren-buffett-donates-2-9-billion-to-gates-foundation-family-charities/ar-BB16u7tr
  • Income inequality: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/warren-buffett-donates-2-9-billion-to-gates-foundation-family-charities/ar-BB16u7tr
  • Corporate welfare: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ten-examples-of-welfare-for-the-rich-and-corporations_b_4589188
  • Penalize the poor https://talkpoverty.org/2014/10/07/punished-for-being-poor/ . For a specific discussion of the subsidy wealtheir people get from low-paid immigrant labor, https://www.stltoday.com/opinion/mailbag/underpaid-immigrants-help-poor-subsidize-the-rich/article_2f1d8094-9700-5f8b-8d38-562fd75a7657.html
                                                                                                                          • Donated their fortunes: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/warren-buffett-donates-2-9-billion-to-gates-foundation-family-charities/ar-BB16u7tr

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Activism, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Energy & Sustainability, General Commentary, Innovation, language, People Helping People, Politics, poverty, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

interracial couple in US flag regalia
interracial couple in US flag regalia

As the United States of America marks its 244th birthday today, it’s a good time to look at the state of this nation.

The US was the first modern constitutional democracy, just shy of 26 years earlier than second-place Norway. That’s a terrific achievement that makes many Americans proud–including me. But the founders of this country were White, male property owners, some of whom saw human beings as part of their property. And the democracy they created was an unequal one that gave voting rights only to White, male property owners. It took all the way until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to extend that franchise all the way down to Black women in all parts of the segregated South.

Americans think of ourselves as a “can-do” people. Over the course of its history, the US has often been in the vanguard, with the rest of the world playing catch-up later. The US was especially good at technology, pioneering innovations ranging from the interchangeable parts that made mass production possible to the amazing moon missions that took less than seven years from JFK’s speech at Rice University to Neil Armstrong’s “giant leap for mankind” as he became the first person ever to set foot on the lunar surface, to enormous leadership in green energy from the 1970s into the 1990s.

And Americans often see ourselves as the greatest country in the world. In many ways,  that image is correct. We have amazing natural and scenic resources, a wide diversity of people, cultures, ecosystems, and more. We are very resilient, even scrappy at times. We have a democracy that has not only lasted but expanded. We’ve birthed may popular movements for justice and liberation, and experiments in new ways to form community, that went around the world.

As one example, it’s hard to imagine the LGBT movement globally without the strength of that movement in the US starting in 1969 with Stonewall. Stonewall didn’t magically spring up out of nowhere. Little-known homosexual-rights advocacy groups like the Mattachine Society (for men) and Daughters of Bilitis (for women) had been around since the 1950s. The Gray Panthers, founded in Philadelphia, took on agism. Disability activists pushed through the Americans with Disabilities Act.

But we also lead in many areas where leading isn’t a good thing. 73 percent of US homicides involve a firearm, and per capita firearms ownership is more than twice the number of #2 Yemen. The US is the only country to have more guns than people. We have the highest healthcare costs in the world but far from the best outcomes. And of course, new cases of Coronavirus are raging in the US, while Europe and Asia have done a much better job on control.

And despite the perception of American exceptionalism–that we’re a beacon to the rest of the world–there are many areas where the US is far, far below “the best in the world.” This could be a much longer list, but here are a few examples:

The US has enabled an enormous transfer of wealth from middle-class and working-class people to the 1 Percent. People of color have faced numerous additional institutional barriers to participating in that wealth.

The US has also been a hotbed of hatred, where for centuries, people have been attacked and often killed for their real or perceived skin color, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and other factors. The FBI’s most recent statistics, for 2018, document 7,120 hate crime incidents (this list taken verbatim from the site):

  • 59.5 percent stemmed from a race/ethnicity/ancestry bias.
  • 18.6 percent were motivated by religious bias.
  • 16.9 percent resulted from sexual-orientation bias.
  • 2.2 percent stemmed from gender-identity bias.
  • 2.1 percent resulted from bias against disabilities.
  • 0.7 percent (58 offenses) were prompted by gender bias.

My guess is that these terrible statistics don’t even count police murders of people of color.

What is the Real America?

Technically, America is much more than the US. It’s everything from the northern tip of Alaska to the southern tip of Argentina–and Americans live anywhere within. But right now, I’m just talking about the US.

And the answer is…all of the above, and more. Our diversity is part of our resilience and our strength. But our education (in school and out, and that includes social media) tends to sharpen our existing divisions and make it hard to find people who disagree with us–let alone have those meaningful, structured conversations that explore how we can work together with people who are not like us.

And it hasn’t helped that the current president has repeatedly and publicly embraced racism,  misogyny, ableism, and difference, while promoting suppression of real news and science, monolithic social mores that ignore or (sometimes even physically) attack different perspectives, and dictatorships in other countries. A president who has put children in cages, essentially closed the borders to legitimate asylum seekers (long before COVID), slashed the safety net, appointed a likely child abuser to the Supreme Court, and made a mockery of our cherished democracy.

This Moment: A Time for Action

Many things are changing in our society this year:

  • The pandemic has changed the way we interact–and created a ridiculous ideologically based divide between those who take precautions and those who don’t
  • Anger around police mistreatment has created a mass movement
  • COVID has shown that our entire society can pivot, that all those “impossible”changes around issues from climate change to racism are actually less drastic than what we’ve already changed

In short, the cauldron is bubbling. What emerges depends on what we put in–but this could be a time to Make America Great, finally.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Corporate Social Responsibility, Democracy, Diversity, Eco-friendly, Environment, General Commentary, Innovation, People Helping People, Politics, Social and Economic Justice, Technology Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

An article called “Build Back Better,” offered eight ways we can mitigate the climate crisis as we reopen. It’s on the Singapore-based Eco-Business site (often a wealth of fresh thinking to my American eyes)

I’d only read a couple of paragraphs when I got the idea to start a community on the theme of building back better—but not just for climate change. I envision a portal with resources and ideas to create better futures in criminal justice/policing, nonviolent defense, immigration, equitable housing, transportation, community food self-sufficiency, education, the work world, democracy… There’s a ton of great stuff out there, but I’m not aware of a one-stop resource that crosses silos, and disciplines, reaches people with a wide range of passions, interests, skills, and demographics, and has the power to create change.

While it certainly builds on the work I’ve been doing for several years at Going Beyond Sustainability, I see it as a community project that would seek ideas both from thought leaders/subject experts and from “ordinary” people (none of us is actually ordinary; all of us are unique).

And use social media, press outreach, and other tools to get it in front of leaders in government, business, academia, nonprofit, etc. After all, every major site started small, even Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Twitter. Using the power of the Internet, this could evolve rapidly to a place that journalists and politicians turn to for sources and advice.

I got so juiced that I stopped reading, ran off to GoDaddy, and scooped up build-back-better dot net (not using the domain syntax because there’s no site up yet so I don’t want it clickable). Most of the more obvious variations were already taken, which tells me there could be some traction in the concept. Only after I secured the domain did I go back and finish reading the article. UPDATE, JULY 9: I’m now thinking it might be better to come up with a cool, brandable single-word name (and I have a few possibilities in mind)–rather than a three-word name whose meaning isn’t all that obvious.

So…who wants to play? If it’s going to fly, it’s going to need volunteers:

  • Thinkers and doers: researchers, authors, activists, business and community leaders, students, etc., who could post ideas-in-progress and let the community help those ideas evolve into workable solutions
  • Web designers who can handle complex threading and submission forms that allow people to submit and subscribe by specific idea, by topic heading, and overall—and who have a deep understanding of Internet security and SEO
  • Topic leaders who are experts in their subject and can moderate submissions so the spammers, trolls, and nut-jobs have to play someplace else—but who will put up actual ideas that are submitted in their area, even if they personally don’t see them as workable. (That would be an ideal opportunity to help them think their idea through. Post the submission and immediately post a comment that doesn’t put down the idea but grounds them in reality, with questions like “have you thought about what could happen if…?” “Do you think this could also be useful in (a different discipline)?” “What resources would this

    Residents of Wadajir, Somalia attend a meeting on community policing. Photo by David Mutui, courtesy Wikipedia Commons

    require and how would you go after them?”

  • Influencers (including journalists, bloggers, marketers, people operating successful online communities, people with a big fan base or lots of social media connections) who can bring the site to the attention of their networks
  • Revenue generators who would work on commission to raise money for hack-proof site operation, and eventually raise enough to start paying volunteers

Obviously, this is only a preliminary sketch. If you’d like to be part of this, use my contact form (on my sister site, Going Beyond Sustainability) to get in touch.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Ethics in Government, Gratitude, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, People Helping People, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , ,
A recent Black Lives Matter protest in Portland, OR, June 4, 2020

Happy Juneteenth. As you probably know by now, June 19th is a Black American holiday celebrating the day the last slaves in a Confederate state finally got the news that slavery had been overturned 2-1/2 years earlier (four Union states still permitted slavery for a few more months, until the 13th Amendment became law).

A recent Black Lives Matter protest in Portland, OR, June 4, 2020
A recent Black Lives Matter protest in Portland, OR, June 4, 2020

You also probably know that the guy in the White House planned to have his first live indoor rally in months today–and rubbing salt in the wounds, it was going to be in Tulsa, site of the worst violence against a black community in the history of the US (in 1921). And of course, you know that the US has been rocked by racial justice protests for weeks, following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.

The public outcry was so fierce that even a group as tone-deaf as his campaign staff (who apparently knew about both of these events ahead of setting the date), and as deliberately inflammatory and reluctant to admit wrong as the man himself, had to walk it back. The rally will still be in Tulsa, but tomorrow.

Both Bruce Dart, head of Tulsa’s health department, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the face of the federal response to coronavirus, are very unhappy about this, BTW, as COVID-19 cases have been climbing rapidly there.

Which brings home the point that nonviolent citizen action is effective even against a thuggish, narcissistic, pathological liar and would-be lifetime dictator like this one. Here are five particularly famous examples, among thousands. I have personally participated in dozens of nonviolent events or sustained campaigns that had significant impact, most spectacularly the Seabrook Occupation of 1977 and the year-long Save the Mountain campaign I founded in 1999.

Not coincidentally, black organizers of Tulsa’s annual Juneteenth celebration, who had canceled the event over the virus, uncanceled it and are now expecting 30,000 people (11,000 more than will be at the re-election rally).

How I Will Mark Juneteenth

I’m attending two Juneteenth events today: first, a virtual celebration featuring two black Jewish rabbis who are both musicians at 5 pm ET/2 pm PT, and second, a live candlelight vigil, with distancing and masks, at the site of the Sojourner Truth statue in Florence, Massachusetts, a 20-minute drive from my home.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail